BOLIVIANS DREAM OF TOURISM REPLACING COCAINE AS CASH CROP

SHINAHOTA, Bolivia -- Drug-smuggling planes used to land in the middle of
the street in this farming town at the height of the cocaine boom in the
mid-1980s.

That was when Roberto Suarez, the local kingpin, was so rich he offered to
pay off Bolivia's entire national debt.

But after three years of a government coca eradication campaign, cocaine is
virtually a thing of the past here. Now the future is full of suntan lotion
and long drives off the tee.

At least that is the idea of Oscar Bakir, a telecommunications executive
who thinks Shinahota could be the next Disney World or Riviera.

"I know there is an image problem," Bakir said. "But I have a dream of
sipping a beer at the bar in the middle of my hotel's swimming pool."

Bakir, 47, says he has sunk $2 million into his dream, one that includes a
118-room hotel with an 18-hole golf course, four tennis courts, a
convention center and a giant swimming pool with more curlicues than a
French garden.

Set at the intersection of three Amazon River tributaries, the skeleton of
a hotel is emerging in sight of a road where coca growers and army troops
skirmished recently.

Bakir said he hoped to complete his hotel by April, but a Bolivian bank cut
off negotiations for a $2 million loan during the recent road blockades by
coca growers hoping to protect their last illicit crops. Now the project is
at a standstill.

But with the possibility that the recent protests are the final sparks of a
dying coca farmer movement, dreamers like Bakir are cropping up all over
the tropical Chapare region.

The Chapare is an area the size of New Jersey in central Bolivia and is
rich with magnificent waterfalls, rare orchids, splendid butterflies and
jungles full of toucans and parrots. Roadside restaurants cook up wild boar
and catfish with zesty local sauces heavy on the garlic.

Coca growers who have had their fields eradicated are starting over by
building botanical gardens and amusement parks cut out of the jungles in
their back yards. The mayor of Villa Tunari is building a $40,000 "welcome
arch" across the highway that cuts through town in hopes of encouraging
tourists to stop.

Two German biologists have built a small "ethnoecology" museum complete
with local tarantula and snake specimens and a restaurant in the back that
specializes in bouillabaisse and German pancakes.

Despite the occasional gunshots and whiffs of tear gas, a few tourists do
come. Some are fishermen. Some are botanists. And then there are the curious.

"In Sweden you hear about the jungle, but here you can actually see the
monkeys and small alligators on the rivers," said Jorgen Wrengbro, 51, a
Swedish police officer and Evangelist missionary who stopped by the museum.
"And of course you can see the coca plants."

Naturally, most tourists would shy away from a region known for drug
traffickers and unrest. And it will take a long time to overcome years of
bad publicity. For example, a line in the Lonely Planet Bolivia travel
guide warns against the dangers of hiking through remote stretches of the
Isiboro-Secure National Park "unless you have all the proper letters of
recommendation from people higher up in the coca growers' association."

But according to local guides, a bad reputation for some is a magnetic
mystique for others.

"The tourists always ask about the coca," said Jose del Gadillo, a
38-year-old guide. "And many ask where they can find cocaine. I tell them
it's too dangerous."

The biggest legal tourist attraction in the Chapare is a hike through the
Amboro National Park past the mating blue morpho butterflies and stunning
bamboo groves to the so-called Cave of the Night Birds.

Guides here say there are only three such caves in the world -- the two
others are in Venezuela and Peru -- where the rare, nocturnal guacharos or
oilbirds (Steatornis caripensis in scientific lingo) scream loudly all day.
Extremely sensitive to light, the nearly blind birds leave their cave only
at night to find tropical fruit to eat.

The only problem is that the park ranger who is the gatekeeper to the cable
car that crosses a river to reach the cave is known to take all-day lunch
breaks. His wife is around, but she appears to be too busy drying coca
leaves to find him.

"We have a ways to go to improve services," del Gadillo conceded. "But the
future of tourism in the Chapare looks bright."